Moodle.org forum posts

Early bird 5.2

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 15:35:26 GMT

by Marina Glancy

Hi David!

I second this concern.

The thing is that in order to properly mark version as compatible with 5.2, I need to add 5.2 to GHA running mooodle-plugin-ci but the branch MOODLE_502_STABLE will not exist before the release date. Adding 'main' may mean that it will start failing after a month, when there are new changes in the main branch.

Early bird 5.2

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 07:17:10 GMT

by Davo Smith

Agree with the above - none of my plugins are getting Early Bird this time around (which is a pity, as I don't think I've missed one since they started).

Once branch MOODLE_502_STABLE exists, then I'll be updating my plugins to test against it and will release once they're all passing. But that won't be this weekend, as I already have plans, so no way I'll be ready with this for Monday.

Explanation for All factor report?

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 08:49:46 GMT

by Jari Vilkman

Hello,

Could someone please explain what each column in the All factor report actually means? The help page is quite limited:

https://docs.moodle.org/501/en/All_factor_report

Specifically, I’m unsure what the following columns indicate:

total users
logged in
pending MFA
not logged in
trust this device
cohort
email
non-administrator
authentication type
user capability
total

I’ve also noticed some confusing results in real data, for example:

The value in the first total users column sometimes differs from the total value in the same row.
In some cases, the logged in number is higher than total users.
Pending MFA can also be higher than total users.

Could someone clarify exactly what each column counts, and why these seemingly inconsistent values might occur?

Thanks in advance!

🧡 Moodle 5.2 QA Cycle Wrap-Up

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 07:59:22 GMT

by Héctor Benedicte

Yay!!

Thanks to you Simey, you've done a brilliant job!

It’s been a pleasure to be part of it ☺️🥳

Early bird 5.2

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 09:15:26 GMT

by Víctor Déniz Falcón

Hello fellow Moodlers!

Moodle 5.2 is out! This new release brings plenty of reasons to dive in, explore what’s new, and make sure your plugins are all set for the latest version of Moodle! And of course, that means it’s time for the traditional Early bird challenge!

For the next three weeks, plugin developers have the chance to test, polish, and release updates that are fully compatible with Moodle 5.2. Any plugin with a verified 5.2-compatible version available by Monday, 20 April 2026, 23:59 UTC will earn the Early bird 5.2 badge.

A quick reminder of what’s expected:

Test your plugin thoroughly with Moodle 5.2 (automated tests like Behat and PHPUnit can save you time!).
Fix any warnings, notices, or regressions you find.
Release a new version, or mark your existing one as compatible if you’ve confirmed it works perfectly.

Please note that simply marking compatibility isn’t enough — the goal is to ensure real testing and quality. We may withhold or revoke badges if a plugin doesn’t appear to have been properly verified. Late submissions can’t be accepted.

You can track the growing list of 5.2-compatible plugins in the Plugins directory

🧡 Moodle 5.2 QA Cycle Wrap-Up

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 06:36:34 GMT

by Simey Lameze

We are excited to announce the completion of another successful QA cycle! Thank you all for your incredible hard work and dedication.

🌟 Cycle Highlights

A huge thank you to all our testers for your commitment and effort! We completed 383 tests during this cycle, achieving an outstanding 100% pass rate 🎉

🐛 Issues Fixed During QA

Thanks to the quick responses from our core developers, we were able to fix several issues during the cycle. Here’s the list of bugs that were fixed and merged:

🚧 Deferred Issues

A few issues identified during the QA cycle have been deferred for fixes after the release:

👎 Bugs identified again this cycle

⚠️ Note on Upgrade Debugging Messages

During the upgrade to Moodle 5.2, you may see debugging messages stating: "Deleting question which is no longer linked to a context. Assuming system context to avoid errors, but this may mean that some data like files, tags, are not cleaned up."

Rest assured, these messages will not prevent or break your upgrade. This is a known reporting quirk currently being addressed in MDL-88393.

🏁 Final Thank You

To every Moodler who contributed whether by testing, investigating, or providing fixes. Your efforts have been absolutely essential in maintaining the quality and reliability of Moodle for educators and learners worldwide.

Your contributions keep our community strong and our platform excellent.

Thank you once again for your dedication and teamwork and we’re already looking forward to seeing you all in the Moodle 5.3 QA cycle! 🧡

🏅 All testers should have received a QA cycle badge to celebrate your contribution, please ensure your moodle.org email address matches your Jira email.

error V 4.5

Tue, 07 Jan 2025 21:42:12 GMT

by Eduardo Kraus

Hello Héctor! 😊

To identify the error more precisely, what you can do is enable the developer mode in your Moodle. This will allow you to see more detailed information about the error, which will help in diagnosing it.

Open the config.php file in the root of your Moodle installation via FTP or SSH. Add the following line of code right after the Moodle configuration variables:

@error_reporting(E_ALL | E_STRICT);
@ini_set('display_errors', '1');
$CFG->debug = (E_ALL | E_STRICT);
$CFG->debugdisplay = true;

Save the file and reload the page where the error occurs. Now, you will see more information about what exactly is going wrong. With this, you will be able to identify the exact cause of the error and how to fix it.

Eduardo Kraus
Teacher and programmer

Release specific feedback after lead assessor check

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:31:31 GMT

by AL Rachels

It has been a long time since I actively used the quiz, but you should be able to do that with Moodle quizzes anyway. I recently just added the whole new Moodle Quiz Engine to the Content Pages plugin and for some of the question types, this can be done. Note that Content Pages is very similar to the Lesson plugin, except you can use any installed Moodle question type. So far as I know the Lesson plugin still uses it own versions of question types.

If the expected student response is an essay type answer, or just typed input, the Diary plugin can do that. Plus the latest version of Diary not only can automatically grade for common errors you define, you can autograde for required words and phrases. The teacher during setup, can set whether or not a student gets to see the "Possible" autograde, but the teacher has to "Mark and/or provide feedback" before the student sees their actual rating. If a final, moderator, makes a change to the rating and feedback, then that is the one the student receives in the gradebook.

Note that I maintain both Content Pages and Diary, so I am just a little, "biased" towards them when possible. LOL But I think if you want multiple people involved in the rating process, I think you might also want to look at using the Assignment activity. I think it can be set up to use multiple raters and nowadays, with the right plugins, you can embed questions.

Integration round 2026-04-15

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 07:03:46 GMT

by Mihail Geshoski

20 issues have been successfully integrated, with 0 rejected and 85 in the queues.

Notes:

🚀 Moodle 5.2 RC2 was released on 15 April 2026.
🗓️ The official version of Moodle 5.2 will be released on Monday, 20 April 2026.
Moodle 5.2. QA testing update:
- ✅ 383 issues passed - 100% complete.
📣 Friendly reminders:
- Integration gates will remain closed until Monday, 20 April 2026, when the on-sync period begins (lasting 2 weeks).
- Moodle 5.0 will reach the end of general support on 20 April 2026, with security support continuing until 5 October 2026.

Warm thanks:

To all Developers and QA testers, for your continued dedication and effort in bringing us closer to the Moodle 5.2 release.

Heads-up for Moodle 5.2: Custom Certificate refactor (Element System v2) + upgrade notes (CHANGES.md)

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 18:32:41 GMT

by Mark Nelson

Hey all,

Just some recent changes before I do the official release for 5.2 - this may affect you as a developer of a third party element plugin if you have already migrated. I decided I didnt want logic for the width/height etc to be in some secret place that is hidden from developers, so now third-party developers have to explicitly put it in their plugin code. This makes it much cleaner, so any developers relying on the hidden magic you'll have to update. Related -

1. https://github.com/mdjnelson/moodle-mod_customcert/commit/7ac60b4d4e617c5551ec2b54e67d34825a2e5326
2. https://github.com/mdjnelson/moodle-mod_customcert/commit/abb0a9cf9b8f2fffe08527cd30678933847b9e94
3. https://github.com/mdjnelson/moodle-mod_customcert/commit/847c249426f13420314af1c163a316fa69485770

Thanks.

Returning learners forgetting My courses tab exists

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 06:40:48 GMT

by Mary Cooch (personal account)

Would it help to add the Course overview block to the default dashboard (Site admin > Appearance} and reset the dashboard for all users? That said, I like Shirley's suggestion

Take over maintenance : block_myprogress

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 09:59:41 GMT

by Luiggi Sansonetti

Hi

It's done with the latest version updated

Cheers.

HEADS UP: Moodle LMS 5.2, plus 5.1.4 and other minor versions coming 20 April

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 06:25:45 GMT

by Mary Cooch (personal account)

If you mean the user docs, then the New features page and upgrading page are normally released a few days beforehand?

Moodle dashboard IA

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 22:38:04 GMT

by Francisco Carrizo

Hi everyone!

My name is Francisco, I’m from Buenos Aires, Argentina, and I’ve been working as a Moodle Administrator for a few years now. Over time, I’ve jumped into development to build my own plugins, especially because I’m really into the analytics and data side of things.

I wanted to share a project I’ve been working on: it’s an external WebApp that talks to Moodle through a custom plugin I built. It handles the Web Services and uses SSO so users can jump straight into the app.

What’s inside?

I’ve organized the dashboard into a few main sections:

General Stats: All the important KPIs in one place.
Student Tracking: Real-time progress
Course Tracking: Real-time progress for students and their specific enrollments.
Dropout Risk (The fun part): A module that predicts abandonment risk. The best part is that you can tweak the parameters depending on the specific course needs.
Messaging & Certificates: Tools to send notifications and a quick search for certificates by user or course.

Current Status

I’m still polishing the English translations and a few other details, but the project is well on its way.

I’d love to get some feedback! If anyone is interested in trying it out in a test environment, please feel free to reach out. I’m looking for suggestions on what else could be useful.

Francisco

Images

Moodle 4.5: Quiz duplication causes 504 Timeout and massive DB queries

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 09:56:54 GMT

by Tim Hunt

Visvanath has already give a good answer to most of this.

I am surprised that in Modern Moodle, duplicating a course uses the core_courseformat_update_course web service at all, or that it locks the session.

Are you using 'Asychronous backup'? Setting on Admin -> Courses -> Backups -> Asynchronous backup/restore. It is recommended to have that on. Won't make things acutally faster, but will let the backup work without timeouts.

Moodle 4.5: Quiz duplication causes 504 Timeout and massive DB queries

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 08:26:25 GMT

by Visvanath Ratnaweera

Grüsse nach Norden!

You're right. Many of us are in this unfortunate situation characterized by massively duplicated question categories and experiencing all sorts of difficulties - some operations taking incredibly long or not ending at all or loading the server so heavily that it crashes and even giving errors due to inconstant data caused by those crashes and more - we immediately think that we have the same "problem". Maybe, but not the same cause, simply because there were/are many causes and each has his own combination/complication. In this thread we need to look at your case. But it is not that easy, we automatically think along our own experience. Still giving it a try.

You say, the problems occur mostly in one course. What is special about that course?

- Is it the only course that makes use of a large collection of question categories?

- And consequently contains large number of duplicated categories?

- Is it a "forever course"? People come and take exams and go, the course remains - with all the user data, most importantly the exam results?

- Do you duplicate a few quizzes each time?

- Do they get their questions randomly from question categories?

You said, that the all the question categories that are being used in this course are at the course level, none at course category level, not even at the top (site) level? That would eliminate certain suspicions, later versions of Moodle 4, especially 4.5 LTS, has shown that site level question categories cause disproportionately high loads.

Are you certain that database tables are consistent? I don't mean "unused" records but also integrity damaged. I saw that you've started doing that. You'll find many user contributed "health checks" in the discussions. There was even an official /tool/health/ sometime. I was developing my own, but then this versioning of questions came, which was too much for me.

Talking of question versioning, how many versions your questions have on average? Are your quizzes set always to take the latest version?

Also a good thing that the clone behaves identically. So you can also try some potentially destructive medicines.

Are the prod. server and the clone in the same machine, the same horse power?

The huge database queries sound like Moodle is wanting to back up huge amount of data in to the database and getting timed out. I would dive in to that. Why? What data? It is possible that this is a one-time blockade. If you can make it run on the CLI, that might release the blockade.

The large number of files in the quizzes are suspicious too. If there are images in the questions, Moodle should not duplicate them, they are stored once in the repository. That reminds me a bug Atto(?) had, it converted images dragged-and-dropped to Base64, a) undermining this process b) the (bloated) Base64 need to be loaded directly in to RAM!

All that said, you have professional DBA in the team I assume. In the case of MySQL/MariaDB they have to be "vacuum cleaned" after maltreated.

Quiz attempts graded correctly, but final quiz grade shows 0.00 and overall feedback fails

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 08:46:40 GMT

by Tim Hunt

This sounds like a known issue that was fixed several minor releases ago. MDL-85246 fixed in 5.0.2 and 4.5.6.

You answer is correct - Language Pack

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 13:04:35 GMT

by Gareth Harris

Thanks Tim

Editing the combined feedback section of the quiz sorted the language issue.

Gareth

Moodle Forum Analytics

Sat, 14 Aug 2021 07:18:29 GMT

by Thom Rawson

Hello! Just brainstorming here:

The Moodle Association of Japan moved the reporting about forums forward via the MUA a few release cycles ago. Now, uses have access to a "Summary Report" and users can also "Export" raw forum data for analysis. These are two positives.

However, working with these tools and other forum analysis tools, we have discovered things really bog down when the data grows big. Checking relationships between replies (for example) and calculating the depth of replies (for another example) for each user, each group, each grouping, and even analyzing "discussion post by discussion post" gets increasingly complex and taxing on system resources.

Would there be any value or benefit in designing (for Moodle) a kind of "Report Caching" system that would periodically update selected tables with summarized data for display? What I mean is that a user chooses the report they want to "cache" and then that report gets run using the specified criteria once every cron cycle (as a scheduled task -- for example -- hourly). Then the data is slowly populated in the background and made available through a single table read and display when the user accesses the report.

If there already exists such a system (I'm not talking about configurable reports which require regular users to have a deeper knowledge of SQL), I'd be interested in learning more about it. If such a system doesn't exist, I suggest (with LA becoming more and more prominent) that Moodle should begin planning one.

What do others think?

HEADS UP: Moodle LMS 5.2, plus 5.1.4 and other minor versions coming 20 April

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 07:15:46 GMT

by Séverin TERRIER

Yes, Mary, and that's fine and useful

In fact, just release pages (on developper doc) miss these days before release dates, for minor and major versions.

HEADS UP: Moodle LMS 5.2, plus 5.1.4 and other minor versions coming 20 April

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:47:31 GMT

by Séverin TERRIER

Hi Matt,

Thank you for your answer, these clarifications, and work toward this goal.

I know that the new documentation for 5.2 is already up and running. Of course, some things still needs to be worked on.

But in fact, in my mind, and generaly speaking (for each major version), i mainly think about three pages : the release page (on the developper documentation), the new feature page and the updating page, that are the three more important things an admin must know before installing/upgrading, and that always exists for each version.

It would be useful if (at least) these pages where available some days in advance, so that they can be translated, and accessible the day of the release. For minor versions, it's only the release page.

Hope it can be done for future versions.

Cheers,
Séverin TERRIER

Inline formulas not rendering in STACK quizzes on Moodle 4.5.8 (latest goemaxima/STACK)

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 08:29:48 GMT

by Oliver Smitkowski

We figured out what went wrong during the update process and are rectifying it right now. This problem was not caused by STACK or Maxima. Thank you again for all your replies.

Moodle 4.5: Quiz duplication causes 504 Timeout and massive DB queries

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 18:55:13 GMT

by Visvanath Ratnaweera

Generally, early Moodle 4.x had a bug which made the number of questions to grow exponentially. There are many, many resulting discussions in this forum. This is a kind of a summary: What is the state of the duplicating questions in Moodle 4.5 LTS?

In the meantime there are updates like Duplicating a quiz duplicates questions in a question bank and a reciepe Huge Question Bank Upgraded Successfully to Moodle 5.0. I say "generally", since I don't know whether these things are related.

Re: LearnR is now a child theme of Boost Union

Thu, 15 Feb 2024 11:41:53 GMT

by Chris Kenniburg

I debated making this a separate plugin and maybe I should have but in-house for us it's just how we deploy Moodle. I share out what we do so others might benefit. Sometimes, that means we change directions.

It wasn't a decision taken lightly to switch to a child theme. Moving forward it will be much more stable, improved styling features, and we all benefit from the team of developers behind Boost Union which is truly remarkable.
I should have a new child theme update out soon which has a new course tiles feature. I might take that as a baseline and add new customizations as time goes on.

I don't know if the previous functionality will return but I think most will appreciate the new courestiles.

Following this bump in switching from a fork to a child theme things will be stable moving forward and it'll be easier to develop features and focus more on styling.

Moodle Docs 5.2 wiki available

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 14:17:46 GMT

by Helen Foster

Moodle 5.2 is scheduled for release on 20 April 2026. In preparation, we have set up Moodle Docs 5.2 in English and Moodle Docs 5.2 in German.

Help with documenting new features and improvements in 5.2 is always welcome! Please check out the list 5.2 issues labelled docs_required.

Moodle Font Awesome icon.

Fri, 05 Dec 2025 18:09:48 GMT

by Gareth Barnard

Hello,

I've noticed today that https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-Awesome/issues/2167 has been closed and a note added to create a new brand issue if wanted. I'm not sure if Julian will do so as I understand he no longer is involved with Moodle.

Is this something that is beneficial to have / MHQ will support in terms of icon use? If so, should MHQ request it?

Cheers,

Gareth

Re: New default icon set for Moodle 2.4 roadmap

Thu, 27 Sep 2012 16:42:49 GMT

by Barbara Ramiro

Right, so the plan is to have individual svg file for each icon (neither sprite nor font). Here is the draft guidelines and open for feedback. Cheers!

HEADS UP: Moodle LMS 5.2, plus 5.1.4 and other minor versions coming 20 April

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 07:56:49 GMT

by Matt Porritt

Hi Séverin,
Thanks for the feedback, having the documentation available earlier is a goal we are working towards. The initial steps to this have been having the feature set for a release finalised sooner, this also has the added benefit of making the release process smoother. We've made some good progress here over the most recent releases and as this continues to improve we will be able to have the documentation (and other assets) available sooner.
However, for the LMS 5.2 release the new documentation will be released on the same say 20th April.

Cheers,
Matt Porritt

Re: siteidentifier what is its general purpose

Fri, 10 Oct 2014 07:29:39 GMT

by David Mudrák

Hi Mark. The general purpose of that is to uniquely identify the site once and forever. The value can be used everywhere where possibly multiple Moodle instances share the same data space (caching for example) or when the site is to be registered etc. It could also be used to identify if the data is originating at the same site or not - although backup/restore and question bank export/import seem to use their own ways of this check.

Let me recommend to not touch the value at all. Keep it as it is even if you change the URL of the site.

You answer is correct - Language Pack

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 14:46:42 GMT

by Tim Hunt

Is that a Moodle language string, or is it part of the question itself? Can you check on the form for editing the question?